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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
The mighty thesaurus is
stalking Capitol corridorsA bill that would have limited the amount of public information released to people who allegedly make frequent and frivolous requests for records died a swift, appropriate death, but not before it exposed shocking breach of security at the state Legislature.
The odious piece of legislation was specifically directed toward what its sponsors referred to as "vexatious requesters," a term so frighteningly grammatically overwrought it would cause Noah Webster to hang himself on a dangling participle. Thank God Mr. Webster is way too dead to have been exposed to such wanton abuse of the English language.
The danger the "vexatious requester" bill laid bare was the fact that, somehow, a thesaurus had clearly been smuggled into the state Senate chambers, and an as-yet unidentified cell of language saboteurs had busied themselves by looking up big, complicated words. "Honolulu Lite" is officially asking for an investigation into the matter because if you think the legislative process presently is agonizingly prolonged and bills torturously convoluted, imagine the horror that would ensue if lawmakers got their hands on a thesaurus. There would be hell, the blazes, Pandemonium to pay, compensate, remunerate (see: shell out).
I ASSUMED THAT in these times of terror threats and high security, some sort of a "thesaurus detector" had been set up at all state Capitol entrances to keep WMDs (words of mass distraction) from being spirited onto the property. Senators and representatives, unfortunately, have a natural, genetic tendency to bloviate. The last thing we need is for them to have a thesaurus in their arsenal, allowing them to further camouflage their true agenda with hyperbole and crush us under the weight of frivolous synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, homographs and other words that score highly in Scrabble.
Whoever came up with the words "vexatious requesters" was either just trying to be a big smarty pants (i.e., intelligentsia trousers) or was being a guileful conspirator (i.e., sneaky jerk). I suppose there are some pains in the butt (okole auwe) who make a lot of seemingly pointless requests for public information from various government clerks and secretaries. You don't need to come up with highfalutin' words like "vexatious requesters" to describe these cretins; call them what they are: news reporters.
When I was covering courts, every request I made for information from a judge's clerk or the court clerk's office was considered vexatious. It was supposed to be. That's what court reporters do: comfort the vexed and vex the comfortable. It's hard enough getting public information from clerks who have a curious propensity to try to protect the powerful from prying reporters without them having a "vexatious requester" law to stymie you.
By using the term "vexatious requester," authors of the offending bill, now deceased (the bill, not the authors), were simply trying to disguise their target: people who, in their eyes, are troublemakers. It's just another example of lawmakers coming to believe that a government of the people would work so much better if the people would just stay out of it. As a recovering vexatious requester, I found the proposed law quite distasteful, repellent and ignominious (see: shabby).
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com